3-D Tattoos Are The Coolest New Trend In Body Art

Ink outside the box.

As an art form, tattooing is up there amongst the most difficult to master. Your medium is human skin, your art is almost always dictated by the client, and there are always new trends and techniques to learn about. Compared to a tattoo artist, Picasso had it easy (sorry, P).

As Hello Gigglesreports, right now, one of the biggest trends in body art is 3-D tattooing—creating large-scale pieces that appear to pop out of or sink into the skin. Artists play with shading to create the illusion of depth, which lends the tattoo a surreal and totally unique vibe. Though 3-D tattoos have been around for at least a couple of years, the trend has really begun to blow up on Instagram in recent months: As of Tuesday, there are more than 70,000 posts on Instagram dedicated to documenting the works of top-tier artists, including Jesse Rix and Winston the Whale.

Though each artist, naturally, has his or her own style, some of the coolest 3-D tattoos involve strategically shading the skin to make it appear as though the skin itself—not the tattoo—is three-dimensional. Others, like Rix's below, play with colors to create the illusion that the skin is pulled back to reveal the tattoo. And still others appear to pop out from the skin, like a body-art pop-up book. The technique can also be used to create realistic-looking nipples for those who lost their own due to injury or illness.

Like traditional body art, 3-D tattoos use permanent ink to deposit pigment under the skin— which means that before getting one, you should make damn sure you want it (laser tattoo removal is not a pleasant process). Check out some inspiration, courtesy of Instagram below, and learn about the incredible history of tattoos and body art here.